A number of publications, including The New York Times, are reporting that the Walt Disney Company is poised to announce a bid for Pixar Animation Studios, possibly today. Sources say the Disney board has approved an offer of about $59 a share for Pixar, valuing the company at nearly $7 billion. That would, at once, make Steve Jobs, Pixar's chief, Disney's largest shareholder and, according to reports, give him a seat on the Disney board.  While there are some who say that Michael Eisner, the former CEO of Disney, opposes the purchase at the proposed price, Robert Iger, his …

The news that Disney and Pixar may be joining forces has industry wags speculating as to what it all means--in particular what happens when a true visionary such as Steve Jobs joins an old-line media giant like Disney.  Jobs, who runs both Apple and Pixar, could, as a Disney board member, work to transform Disney from an analog company to one that is at the forefront of the new digital technologies.  Almost every media conglomerate is seeking to leap aboard the digital express. Who better than Jobs--the guy who brought us the iPod--to put Disney at the front of …

The peripatetic Andy Serwer (editor at large of Fortune, who also appears on two CNN shows) sizes up the confrontation between Time Warner CEO Dick Parsons and "investor-provocateur" Carl Icahn as a "sensational battle" between two very different personalities.  Parsons is cool, confident. Icahn is rough around the edges. According to Serwer, Icahn has managed to round up a number of credible individuals as board members for a slate he intends to run against the current Time Warner board. Although some observers have said Icahn is having trouble recruiting the right kind of talent for his board, Icahn denies …

Sir Martin Sorrell, the onetime finance director of Saatchi & Saatchi who has built WPP into a global advertising behemoth through a series of acquisitions, is facing some unpleasant opposition from within the ranks of his own company.  According to a story in TheSunday Times of London, at least two board members say Sorrell has work to do when it comes to his management style.  They say as well that he's failed to properly plan for his successor at WPP.  Sorrell "still retains huge board support," The Times says.  However, two members--Christopher Mackenzie, a former GE executive, and …

Four technology giants--Intel, Motorola, Nokia, and Texas Instruments --yesterday agreed to work together to promote a common standard for broadcasting digital TV on mobile devices, such as cell phones. They have all gotten behind a technology known as DVB-H (Digital Video Broadcasting--Handheld), which will have the effect of accelerating the trend toward mobile TV. The loser here is San Diego-based Quaalcom, which has developed a competing technology (MediaFLO). "Mobile TV efforts are heating up after a slew of mobile entertainment announcements earlier this month at the International Consumer Electronics Show," reports Red Herring. While some companies, such as Samsung and …

Although Merrill Lynch analyst Laraine Mancini said this week that Citadel Broadcasting Corp. had been considered a "less likely candidate" to win the assets of Disney-owned ABC Radio, it appears that Citadel is now in exclusive discussions with Disney about a deal that could reach nearly $3 billion. According to Reuters, rivals "Entercom Commmunications Corp. and private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. were thought to be strong contenders for the assets until recent days, when sources said Citadel began maneuvering to push aside its rivals." Citadel is largely owned by private equity firm Forstmann Little & Co. ABC …

CNN is a fat target these days and thus easy to slap around, which MarketWatch columnist Jon Friedman does today with apparent impunity. "CNN is everything--and nothing. It has a little for everyone, which means it has no real personality or style or tone that it can call its own," write Friedman. The reason for this Monday-morning blast? It's the decision by Headline News, the CNN channel, to give radio host Glenn Beck his own show. Beck is a popular conservative radio host, widely syndicated throughout the country. The problem with that, Friedman argues, is that he "goes against everything …

It was a bad bet. The Sporting News, which for three years--2000 to 2003--had accepted ads promoting illegal Web and phone-based gambling, lost a round with federal prosecutors, who hauled the weekly into court and last week announced that it had paid a whopping $4.2 million fine to the government. What's more, TSN had agreed to conduct a $3 million public-service campaign warning against illegal gambling services. In a statement, the Federal government said, "The Sporting News was aware that its conduct and the fees it accepted in exchange for its conduct were proceeds of illegal gambling." A statement …

In a lengthy, admiring takeout on Rupert Murdoch's four-decades-long march to the top of media moguldom, The Economist says that the powerful businessman faces one overriding challenge in the years ahead --his corporation's  ability to adapt to the digital world.  The various units of New Corp. are "vulnerable," says the magazine, to content piracy, new-wave technologies, and the Internet's ad-siphoning powers.  It's a tricky business, surviving in the Net era, and it sometimes forces seemingly counterintuitive decisions. For example, News Corp. has sometimes subsidized the cost of DVRs for its satellite customers as a way of signing them up and …

Asked the other day if his upcoming courtroom drama “Conviction” is aimed at younger viewers than, say, his long-running hit “Law & Order,” Dick Wolf answered, "Unabashedly.  That's who the advertisers want to reach. That's who the networks want to watch their shows.  And it's not a mystery that people like watching people who are like themselves." Consequently, “Conviction,” which will air on NBC, will be populated with--in the words of Los Angeles Times writer Meg James--"a passel of beautiful people as its main characters, just one of whom is over 40. And that poor guy is killed off …